There's No Beverly in Shunyi

Star Gallery is going to present Kang Haoxian’s solo exhibition There’s No Beverly in Shunyi on 9 January 2021 with a brand-new series that the artist has created during the outbreak of the Covid-19 in 2020.

Beverly Hills, a city of the costal Los Angeles County in California, USA, is one of the world’s most celebrated communities. Kang Haoxian has stayed there shortly from the winter of 2018 to the summer of 2019.

“Los Angeles is a place to party for everyone of any hierarchy. In 2020, I had a plan to go back and stay for some time again, but the pandemic has kept me here in Beijing. It became the spur to my passion that I should paint the nocturnal animals still vivid in my memory. They are all tanned, chic, crazily in love with all kinds of novel pleasures in a party. No matter what their real life may be, they are always fooling around, overindulging themselves, or just being moody wherever there is a party. For them, there are no rules but to follow the instincts.” In his latest works, Kang Haoxian has turned back to his instincts too. Giving up all the media he was used to and a researcher’s mindset, Kang picked up the airbrushes, an unfamiliar tool that would force him to seize the transient feelings as fast as possible like someone just returned from a party. “The state of being carefree and unstrained as desperate as heatwaves, and its aftermath – escalated boredom, decadence, and the emptiness following feverish excitement.”

Located in Shunyi, Beijing, where there are both high-end neighborhoods similar to those of Beverly Hills and affordable lofts and emerging residences for artists to dwell in. “There’s no Beverly Hills in Shunyi, let alone its bold and fun parties. The spirit of freedom is not in the air, but it’s in my imagination behind the mask.”